The A arte Invernizzi gallery will open on Wednesday, 14 December 2016 at 6.30 p.m., the exhibition “Close Up. ‘Listening to the Inaudible Sound of the Work’”, curated by Francesca Pola. Consisting only of small-format works, it creates a dazzling array of contemporary styles and visions. The exhibition offers a very different approach to the experience of the work of art, which is far removed from that of monumental installations or large works. Here there is an identification with the artefact, based on a direct, almost tactile interaction with the physical nature of these works. Because of their size, they can indeed be observed and comprehended through close-up perception.
The idea of an exhibition of small-format works has plenty of historic precedents, ranging from Marcel Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-valise” to the Iris Clert’s Parisian “Microsalon”. And there were also exhibitions of travel sculptures and multiplied art by Bruno Munari and Daniel Spoerri. Even so, the focus here is not on the “portable” aspect of works of this size, though this often turns them into the materialisation of an idea that can be transported easily. In this exhibition, what takes pride of place is the intimacy of the relationship that forms between the viewer and the individual work. This is brought about by the need to stop and focus on each item in order to understand its creative mechanisms, giving rise to a sort of empathy between the beholder and the object. One aspect that is by no means secondary in this process of participation is of course the time spent on each work, which expands in inverse proportion to the size of the object itself.
The relationships between the works on display are based on spatial and associative mechanisms, favouring those creative personalities, characterised by their significant reduction, that have always underpinned the gallery’s exhibition programmes. The viewer is taken close up, in a way that is by no means predictable, in which sequence does not mean seriality, nor iteration repetition.

On the occasion of the exhibition a bilingual catalogue will be published, with an introductory essay by Francesca Pola, reproductions of the works on display, and poems by Carlo Invernizzi that draw on this human empathy. The subtitle of the exhibition also takes inspiration from a phrase of his, emphasising the “inaudible sound of the work”, which can only be perceived in this close-up approach of attention.

Giò Marconi is pleased to present Frankfurt-based artist Tobias Rehberger (b.1966 in Esslingen, Germany) in his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. One of the most important German artists of his generation, Rehberger regularly straddles the lines between the realms of painting, sculpture, design, architecture and conceptual art. His sculptures, environments and installations principally revolve around the concept of transformation and are always exploring the boundaries between the functional and the aesthetic.

At Giò Marconi the artist surprises with the choice of works: on display inside the gallery are more than 30 differently sized framed works on paper. The drawings date from diverse periods and therewith function as a mini retrospective on paper. The exhibited works include both watercolours, prints, pencil and crayon drawings. Some works are studies for bigger projects and environmental installations for which the artist is best known and for which in 2009 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the 53rd International Venice Biennial. Others are completed pieces and autonomous works. Even if his work on paper is initially difficult to align with his sculptural work, it fits seamlessly into an oeuvre in which there are no hierarchies.

There is a touch of humour in Rehberger naming his exhibition Tous pour les femmes - an affirmation of the eternal feminine.
The drawings are to some extent overly ironic and sometimes on the verge of political correctness: “Prejudices against white males (15)” shows a cooked chicken on a plate with bent, spread legs and folded arms, very much resembles a tanned headless reposing woman.
Other drawings openly play with political, racial and sexual stereotypes and prejudices: the girl with the protruding bottom upon which she balances sweets and a glass of milk; the man checking the contents of another man’s pants; the all naked girl band which epitomizes every man’s wet dream.
“Mehr Russen, Kongolesen, Syrer, Pariser und Amerikaner, die schon mal besser aussahen” is a series of watercolours depicting people in traditional folk costumes from all over Europe. As oftentimes with Rehberger, he puns with his titles and witty use of language. His very comic approach through language can also be seen in “Sam in Car” that is a take on a famous Daihatsu ad. The watercolour depicts a mini van jam-packed with various women and an ironic text which reads “Picks up six times more women than a Lamborghini”. No further explanation needed.

Besides the large number of watercolours on display, Rehberger has also produced two new garish neon signs. What they are advertising offers conflicting information. A flashing “Tous pour les femmes” sign with a raised fist, a symbol reminiscent of the 70s feminist movement, welcomes the visitor upon entering the gallery’s courtyard. The bright neon alternates between “Tous pour les femmes” and “RES-TO”, the Italian word for remnants (or small change), which seems to imply that all there is for women are the leftovers. A yellow arrow signposts the way into the gallery space.
Inside, in the gallery’s anteroom, the visitor is greeted by yet another neon sign: a flickering „What else?“ morphs into “S-WE-AT” and dismisses the visitor into the exhibition and Rehberger’s world on paper.
Is the bottom line of Tobias Rehberger’s fourth show “Tous pour les femmes” an affirmative “What else”?

A professor since 2001 at Frankfurt’s Städelschule, the school he attended from 1987 to 1993 and one of Europe’s most prestigious art schools, Rehberger took part in his first exhibition in 1992. Since then, he has had solo exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2014); MACRO Museum, Rome (2014); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2008); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2007); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002).
His works have been showcased at the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2012); Manifesta 1, Rotterdam (1996) and 2, Luxembourg (1998); Venice Biennial (1997, 2003 and 2009). In 2009, he was awarded the Golden Lion for best artist for the design of his café Was Du liebst, bringt dich auch zum Weinen (The things you love also make you cry) at the Palazzo delle Esposizione.
Other awards include the Otto-Dix-Preis (2001) and the Hans-Thoma- Preis in 2009.

MARS is proud to present Yari Miele’s solo show, Blue Night Marble. The site-specific work set in the space of MARS uses polychrome marbles which were discarded after their industrial use in laser inlays. The artist reconstructs the marble textures through a skillful use of colors, following the natural pattern of veins, inclusions and cavities.
Blue Night Marble paraphrases the name of a famous satellite photograph of the Earth taken in 1972. Its nocturnal interpretation leaves space to the usual practice of the artist of using fluorescent paints livened up by Wood's lamps. Thus nocturnal visions of bright heavens are generated, appearing from the darkness. Daylight instead highlights the pictorial trace on the slabs fragments which lie, sedimented, in an uneven and sharp ravines landscape, reshaping the space and turning it into orographies made sculptural by chance.

We are delighted to announce an exhibition by Alex Katz, after his exhibitions this year at Guggenheim in Bilbao and Serpentine Gallery in London.

We will present the more intimate side of the great painterʼs work: his small paintings, or “oil scketches”, and drawings.

As opposed to their large-scale counterparts, the small paintings are made directly in front of the live model or en plein air, their brush strokes are more gestural and impulsive. These are not only preparatory studies showing a monumental plan at its birth, but also autonomous works revealing the initial and spontaneous passion of the artist for his subject. Katz’s ability in rendering the fragile unity of a moment, with a few brush strokes, reveals much of the person portrayed and of the artist’s personal reflections, voluntarily abandoned in the large portraits on canvas which show a more stylized and essential vision.This characteristic is enhanced by the small size which draws the viewer to approach closely and enter the space of the painting, thereby establishing a more intimate physical and mental relationship with the work.
Also the drawings offer insight into the artist's process as often the original idea for a painting is illustrated here in its nascent state. Katz draws quickly in charcoal and pencil searching for the right angle.
Alex Katz was born in New York in 1927 as the son of Russian – Jewish immigrants and studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art from 1946 to 1949. Since the 1960s he has developed a highly innovative realist style unlike any of his contemporaries. Having appeared on the American artistic scene at the end of the ʻ50s, the years of Abstract Expressionism, and being a contemporary of Pop Art and the subsequent artistic movements, Katz surprisingly managed to reconcile the abstract movement with realism in US post war art, in a style that he himself defines as “totally American”. His final images are essential, luminous, direct and sharp, showing very intense colour planes, rendered in a particular bidimensional perspective, free of any sentimental connotation and yet able to communicate a profound emotional involvement.

The work of Alex Katz is widely represented at museum in the USA, including MoMA, the Metropolitan and the Whitney in New York, as well as in European Museums, like Tate Modern in London, the MMK in Frankfurt, the Albertina in Vienna and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

In Photography ends here Sophie Tottie underlines the shortcoming of the mechanic eye; the title implies her interest in focusing on a perceptual room where the “real” balances on the verge to the invisible but is yet possible to experience with the human eye.

The exhibition emphasizes the innate boundaries of the mechanical practice of photography, ending up in a perceptual blankness, which tend to erase major aspects of the works when photographed. In this way Tottie’s work unfold a perceptual concept of “blindness and slowness” 1 as the visitor meditates on the work from different points of view. Similarly to William Blake’s words “For the Eye altering alters all” 2 the works embrace the many meanings coming out from a more careful and deep vision.

The artist invites to codify the “Moving Target” series of drawings by the examination of the materials utilized, from metal to ink - and the supports where the marks have been traced. Spirals create an illusion of a depth while targets, more confrontationally, mark the surface – both (either through imagination or the presence of a physicality) suggest an “I”, where “the inner dimension” becomes a possible starting-point for reflection.

The round shaped wall drawings “Face Value”, “Tipping Point” and “Single Fare” are realized with marks of different metals, which, depending on the metal and the support used, sometimes achieve a trace of different shades, as if showing the inner soul of the marks or the metals themselves.

The usage of everyday devices such as spoons, rings, pieces of pure metals, go beyond the ”real” or “nominal” value and expresses something further about the work and its approach. In her first exhibition with these metal point drawings Tottie quotes a line from the exhibition Worthless “Value is always a term in a relationship, a term of measurement. Value is a discourse, an emotion, a memory, a desire, or all these at once.” 3

“Oxidoplis” and “Oxid Square” show a different realization among the works: they are characterized by definite lines - creating weaves or visual textures (a parallel to lines creating text) and are built up by a permanent ink formerly used to sign documents or to prevent texts from fading. The oak gall ink used contains metal and literally oxides within the air as it is taken out to be applied on the paper. The ink goes from transparent to dark and the crossing-out (i.e. the overlaying of one line over another) decreases the visibility in the act of drawing.

1 In her recent book Surface:, Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media, Guiliana Bruno discusses artists such as Sophie Tottie, Tacita Dean, Robert Irwin, Isaac Julian, Luisa Lambri and refers to how Yve–Alain Bois describes “perceptual ‘blinding’ “ as to “an effect of ‘perceptual slowness.’ In order to actually see, we must slow down and adjust our gaze over time […].” Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media, University of Chicago, 2014. The book will be published in Italian in by Johan and Levi Publishing in 2016.

2 Line from the poem “The Mental Traveler” by W. Blake, from the Pickering Manuscript, 1803. Interpreted by Carl Johan Malmberg in his book about William Blake: “If we look at the world and ourselves differently, the world and we become different.” (Stjärnan i foten, Wahlström och Widstrand, 2012).

3 From the text “Face Value“ by Brian Holmes in the catalogue of Worthless – an exhibition curated by Carlos Basualdo at Modern Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2000.

The Exhibition runs through 14 January 2016

BIO:

Sophie Tottie (Stockholm - Sweden, 1964) currently lives and works in Stockholm. From 1994 on she’s won many awards and artist residencies such as I.S.P. - International Studio program, NY; The Elisabeth Foundation, NY; I.A.S.P.I.S., Stockholm; Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, Berlin. Her artworks have been exhibited at MoMA and The Drawing Center, New York; Kiasma, Helsinki; Moderna Museet; Malmö Konstmuseum; Gothenburg Art Museum; Vancouver Art Gallery; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Biennale di Venezia; Castello di Rivoli. Her works are represented in the MoMA permanent collection, New York, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum, Schering Stiftung / Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. Tottie is currently a Professor at the Royal Institute of Art of Stockholm. Previously, she taught at Malmö Art Academy (at Lund University) and at Harvard University.